Child Safety and How I Screwed Up

Note from Dad- I’m loving this new punishment system my wife and I are trying out. Making Abishai write essays is both educational and punitive. Here’s another one he wrote. This time, he went swimming with some friends without asking and also riding his bike to the pool in the first place without his helmet. I made him go through two drafts for this, but if you see any grammatical errors and such, he’s obviously missing some of my corrections.

Hi, my name is Abishai. Today I’m going tell you about child safety and the reasons it’s important. Child safety in my opinion is what saves lives.

You know what else saves lives? Helmets. Every year all over the world over 300,000 kids take a visit to the emergency room because they weren’t wearing a helmet while biking. Just like Bill Clinton said, “There is nothing more precious to a parent than a child, and nothing more important to our future than the safety of our children.” if you think about it helmets could save the future.

The reason I’m writing this is because I did not do what my parents said and went biking without a helmet. I Know what you’re all thinking, “Oh but I thought he was perfect and all.” Well guess what? I’m not. In fact, nobody is. Tell me that you have never ridden your bike at least once just because you thought it would be fun at the time but then realized “Oh wait, did I forget something? Oh yeah, my helmet, that thing that helps me from getting, you know, concussions, permanent brain damage, contusions, ABD, and over five different types of trauma and syndromes.”

I know that everybody likes lists, so here are five reasons why you should wear helmets…

It protects your head.

When it is raining it makes it easier to see.

In some states it is actually illegal to bike without a helmet.

You set an example for other kids nearby to wear their helmets.

You can avoid big medical bills.

So now, off the topic of helmets and onto a different child safety topic, swimming. It is a topic that most parents would like to avoid so that they don’t have even think about the possibility of their kid drowning? It is a possibility, and you should be prepared to be able to help your child if he or she starts to drown. The best way to be ready is that you should know CPR for both infants and older children because, believe it or not, there is a difference between the ways you do it. Over three thousand kids die every year because of drowning. Another way you can be prepared is to be sure that your child does indeed know how to swim because that could save your child’s life. Also make sure that you know how to swim because you being able to swim could also save your child’s life, because if you know how to swim then you could save him or her from drowning. Not only can CPR save your child, but if you are at a public pool where there is no lifeguard on duty and if some other parent there needs your help then you are now equipped to help them since you know CPR. At that point you’re the neighborhood superhero and the parents of the child you saved will probably bake you a cake or pie which would also be pretty awesome. So not only could knowing CPR save your child and other people’s child, but you could become famous.

Now onto household rules. Here are some house rules in my family…

no running in the house

no food or drinks in the living room

no wrestling without permission

no going outside until school is done

school ends at three pm and no earlier

snacks are at ten and three not any time you want

no horse play around sharp corners

Those are some of our house rules. Now I’m sure you have some house rules yourself. I would love to hear about them. One time we were having a rubber band fight in our house, and it was really fun until CRASH! My brother’s head went right into the corner of the wall. They had to take him to the hospital, and he got three staples in his head. Then another time I was running in the house, and I ran into something and got a black eye it was really painful.

Here is another subject that is not a good conversation starter. What if one day little Timmy went out to play and you told him come back in an hour and three hours later he is nowhere to be seen? In my family we call it check-ins, because that is something that no parent wants to ever even dream about.

My last subject is bullying, which is something that happens in most schools all the way from elementary to college. Bullying is 40% of the reason for youth suicides in America. Over 4000 kids commit suicide each year because of bullying.

Well that’s that. I covered four different types of child safety problems and presented a solution for you, so go forth and live long and prosper.